Winter Festivals and Traditions at Oxford University — Parade of Spirits, Liberty Lands is there

Well, we were. We are back now. As usual, it took a while to get the post up.

It was exciting to take such a spur-of-the-moment trip (all things considered), and it was a little muddled in that I had a very ill friend I wanted to spend some time with right before we left and as soon as we returned, and he was much on my mind. But it was England, and it was exciting!

and this is Claudia’s view of how I looked (I did eventually sit down and Tucker worked the PowerPoint.)

Remember how Matt and Jana from Tucson made Parade of Spirits 2016 extra special with the giant “Leon Russell as Frost King” headpiece? For my birthday in February, I took it one remembrance (and a lot of ouches) further. I was very surprised, in the moment I took this photo, to find myself at forty-seven, in the shortest skirt I’d worn in decades (and the only leatherette one), with a big-ass tattoo of Leon Russell on my calf, speaking at a conference at Oxford, about parades and autism.

People at the conference were really warm and excited, and this has all led to, well, rather a larger plan for our family and one that will probably help take Parade of Spirits in more of the direction that my topic at this conference addressed. All that will be revealed within the next few months.

Our time there was so short that other than getting to the conference and doing my fifteen minutes of talking, the kids’ goal of sending postcards to friends — and getting David Bowie stamps! — were really our only other big goals. (Béla had wanted to ride the London Eye but it was sold out, and about to stop running, by the time we got there.)

Still and all, a really significant step for me personally, in figuring out What’s Next. More to come. Here is Tuck looking (I’m told, and I see it too) like a young Ewan Mc Gregor on Westminster Bridge.